The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for low-temperature plasma treatment of textile products such as knitted, woven and non-woven fabrics, strings and belts.
In the industrial treatment of a textile product such as a cloth, it is conventional that the textile product to be treated is subjected to a scouring process prior to dyeing, in which water repellent foreign matters adhering to the textile product is removed and the textile product is reformed to be hydrophilic, and the textile product is finished after dyeing to render the textile product soft, water repellent, anti-electrostatic and so on; and all the conventional processes are done in a water system.
For instance, in the scouring treatment of a cloth containing cotton, the cloth is treated with an alkaline solution containing such agent as caustic soda or soda ash and a scouring agent by boiling or by steaming for dissolving water repellent foreign matters contained in the cloth, then the cloth is repeatedly washed with water for removing solubilized foreign matters and the agents adhering to the cloth, and the cloth is finally dried. In the finishing process, the cloth is treated with a finishing agent dissolved or dispersed in water and filtered, and then water is evaporated by passing the cloth through a drier. According to the kind of treatment, it is necessary further to fix the finishing agent to the cloth by a high temperature heat treatment.
Under such circumstances, it has recently been proposed to subject a textile product such as a cloth to low-temperature plasma treatment for desizing, scouring and so on. In the conventionally proposed processes, however, the low-temperature plasma treatment of a textile product is done while a long textile product taken up on a shaft or a roll is transferred to another shaft or roll in a batch. The taken-up long textile product is placed in the low-temperature plasma atmosphere in the batch during operation. While both end parts of the taken-up long textile product is always exposed to the low-temperature plasma atmosphere, the interior of the textile product is in contact with the low-temperature plasma for the first time when the textile product is transferred to the other shaft or roll, and therefore, there occurs such a trouble that the treatment becomes uneven.